Monday, 17 March 2014

Cooking with Currys at the Underground Cookery School

A few weeks ago an email popped into my inbox inviting me to a free cookery class at the Underground Cookery School with Currys. Of course my answer was a yes! As soon as I finished work on Wednesday evening I headed straight for Old Street, eager to get started. Despite managing to get lost and turning up five minutes late we were greeted by a glass of bubbly and some delicious looking nibbles. The salmon was a particular favourite.

We quickly put on our #currysinthekitchen apron and waited to be split into two groups. One would be on the curry station first and the other group would be making a pear soufflé.

I was pleased to be put on the curry station first, as I don't particularly have a sweet tooth and this part interested me more. We all gathered around to hear what the instructions were.

We began by cutting the flesh of the chicken from the bone, it was quite fiddly as the chicken was quite hard to hold as you cut it. My clumsy side came out and I ended up nicking my finger with the sharp knife, resulting in an ugly plaster at the end of it for the rest of the evening.

We added oil to the pan and fried a mixture of ginger, garlic and chillies before adding a ladle of sauce that had been premade for us.

The chicken was added along with some vegetables, we poached this for a
few minutes before pouring it into some pots. Labelled with our names
these would go into the oven until we were ready to eat.

Next up was the dessert station, again we clamoured round to hear the instructions. I've never attemped a soufflé before as I always believed they were quite complicated to make.

The first task was seperating 8 egg yolks from their whites. We took it in turns, praying that we wouldn't be the one to ruin it by adding some extra eggshell into the bowl.

Using this lovely electric mixer (I need to get one of these for home!) we whisked the eggs together with some sugar until it reached a meringue consistency.

We folded this mixture in with the pears that had been prepared already for us before we came to the messy part. Putting the soufflé mix into the ramaquins.

They had already been greased for us so all we had to do was place a big spoonful into the ramaquin and bang it on the table to make sure there were no air bubbles. Using a palette knife we smoothed the top and went around the outside with our index finger. This is to allow the air to escape the soufflé whilst it's baking.

These were then popped into a 180 degree oven for 12-15 minutes.

Finally, before we sat down to eat, we were given a quick tutorial on how to make two cocktails. Both were made with Tequila and were really good.

The curry in the oven was starting to smell so good by now that I couldn't wait to eat it. We were sat down at the table and poured a glass of wine before the pots with our names on were brought to us.

Having had a sprinkle of Coriander added, the curry looked and smelt delicious. Accompanied by some rice it was so tasty, I'll definitely be making it again at home.

When the pear soufflé was brought out I was amazed by how well it had risen. I wasn't particularly blown away by my first soufflé, but then I'm not a dessert person anyway. To me it tasted almost like sweet scrambled eggs, the texture was lovely though.

If any of you follow me on Instagram then you may have noticed I uploaded quite a few photos on the night. The reason for this was that Currys had arranged for some prizes to be won for the best Instagrams and best tweets. Unfortunately I didn't win anything which was a shame as I would've loved that food processor! The prizes were pretty amazing and all the wins were well deserved.

I had a lovely evening meeting fellow bloggers and enjoying a meal that I'd help to make. The curry recipe will be making a reappearance in my kitchen sometime soon as it was delicious. I would definitely recommend the Underground Cookery School if you fancied doing something a bit different with your friends or even as a team building exercise for work. You can find out more about them here. Also, if you wanted to read a bit more about this event you can see Currys blog post on it here. Thank you Currys for a fantastic evening!